


Modes of Death

by lilmonkey16



Category: Original Work
Genre: Complete, Essays, Everyone is Dead, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Original Character Death(s), The Author Regrets Everything, The Author Regrets Nothing, modes project, venting through writing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-18
Updated: 2017-08-08
Packaged: 2018-05-21 09:13:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 3,901
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6046108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilmonkey16/pseuds/lilmonkey16
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>We had to write 7 essays on one topic for my AP LANG class and I decided to post them on here because they're pretty good so far.</p><p>Basically there will be 7 separate essays all on or surrounding the topic of Death.<br/>1) Narration<br/>2) Process Analysis<br/>3) Classification<br/>4) Definition<br/>5) Comparison/Contrast<br/>6) Cause and Effect<br/>7) Argument</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Narration

**Author's Note:**

> There will obviously be death in every chapter but I'll try to have notes on anything triggering at the beginning of each of them.

* * *

 

**Click Click Click**

* * *

 

She lies under stiff new paper sheets; listening, waiting, watching. When the bed across the room has changed from groans of pain and huffs of frustration to sagging, whining breaths she makes her move. The sheets crumple to loudly and her breath rushes loudly in her own ears. She steps lightly, the cold tile nipping at her toes, escaping from the shadowed room. 

The hospital hall is dark but alight with noise: monitors buzz, beep, ping; aching groans; sighs, whimpers, distant baby yowls; the constant roar of the Emergency room just a little while away; the  _ click click click  _ of heels clicking down the hall, all echo down to her expectant ears. 

 

She had missed the game two weeks in a row -- surgery left her unable to leave the wheezing, compressing, confinement of her room -- but now, now she was going to have some fun. Blaine and Daniel were holding the game in their room and all the other juniors would be there, it would be like an actual high school party.

Except there it was again…. _click click click_. Growing louder and closer, she panics, ducking into the nurse’s station, she crouches and listens. The _click click click_ stops when they reach the desk, she can feel the beating in her chest race as the tall shadow falls just past where she sits.  The _click click click_ slowly continues down the hall; she’s slower to come out. Looking down the hall she sees no shadow and decides to continue on, she wasn’t going to let some pesky nurse get in the way of her first night of freedom. 

Room 657 sits eerily quiet. The lights are off and the door sits cracked, glancing around the hall for her friends she sees nothing.  (She doesn’t notice the lack of sound all together, no more beeping, yowling, groaning, roaring, but there still is the constant  _ click click click,  _ forever coming towards her.) When she pushes the door open she sees that Daniel is missing. His bed lies empty and unused, it reminds her to much of the bed after Marie had left for hospice. 

The  _ click click click  _ stops. She sees the shadowed figure standing over Blaine’s limp form. Even from here she can see that he’s too pale, too stiff, and most importantly too still. When a sickly skinny claw slips out from the shadow she stands stunned in the doorway. The claw slices through Blaine, leaving no mark on him but leaves her feeling as if her lungs have been ripped from her. 

A silvery mist sweeps to the floor, floating like a heavy mist around the shadowed figure. When they turn the mist funnels into the palm of the claw-like-hand, slipping into an unseen pocket, the silver mist is lost from sight in the endless void of black shadow that is the person in front of her. 

 

They can see her. She knows they can, she can feel their eyes on her. When they step forward she falls back; the  _ click click click  _ echoing in her skull with each step sends her fleeing without care away from the noise to the safe, warm, and noisy room. 

 

She sits in the bed holding herself; staring at the door waiting for the figure to reappear. To see the shadow. To hear the  _ click click click.  _ To see the claw. To  _ feel  _ it steal her soul. Because that’s all that could’ve been doing. It had stolen Blaine’s soul.

 

* * *

 

She isn’t surprised when the doctors tell her that Blaine has passed on. She couldn’t console her friends about losing him. Because they were  _ lying.  _ They said he had a hemorrhage in the middle of the night. That Daniel had been in the room all night. That no nurses had been in the hall during that time. That  _ no one  _ had been in the hall at that time.

But she knew, even if they didn’t believe her. She knew. There had been a killer ( _ a monster)  _ in the room that night. She knew. Because she had  _ seen it.  _ And she could still hear the  _ click click click  _ echoing past every time she left the room.


	2. Process Analysis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So suicide warning, like seriously this is super in depth planning on how to die please don't read if that bothers you.

* * *

 

**Five Steps to Not Fear the Reaper**

* * *

 

Here are five steps to how not to fear the reaper, this easy process will allow for your eternal bliss and freedom from the stresses of everyday life. 

First simply listen to the little voice nagging in the back of your mind. The one that whispers and nudges your thoughts. The one that sits in the dark recesses waiting for weak moments to take hold. Allow it through, allow it the fast pass to the front of your thoughts, allow it to  _ speak.  _ Once this, simply, listen. 

At first it’s words may seem false, but don’t be so quick to argue. Listen to the reasoning, listen to the evidence, remember the actions that it speaks of; is it so wrong? Is it lying. Did these things not happen? Did  _ you  _ not do them and hurt others in the process?  _ Did you even truly care?  _ Doesn’t that mean, well, that this voice should be listened to more? I mean, it is the voice of reason. 

 

Next you must not show that you’ve listened. When speaking, always seem happy. Be agreeable and polite, but forgettable. Make no large impact, leave no trace of your presence. Do not avoid others though. There is a warning list on the internet of what you’re planning, you can not show that you are planning. Hide it. Hide it or they’ll stop it. They’ll make you  _ stay.  _ They’ll be angry. You’ll leave an impression and the voice doesn’t like that. You have to keep them placated but you  _ must  _ keep the voice happy. 

 

Step three you must finalize the plan, gather your materials. This could be buying some new razors, visiting your grandparents’ house for medication, or raiding the liquor cabinet at home. Any of these things could help the plan go along but you must also pick the time and place. You can’t be caught.  _ I’ll repeat:  _ **_you can not get caught._ ** If you’re caught they’ll send you to the hospital, they’ll numb you and try to ‘fix’ you. It won’t work of course, the voice will just get angrier, and you won’t be able to stop it or placate it because they’ll  _ watch  _ you. So don’t get caught. 

Go for a place that’s comfortable, somewhere you’ll be okay spending a little time in, but where you won’t make a mess. You shouldn’t be a bother to them when they find you. Make sure you’ll be alone for a good while, a few hours might not be long enough with some of your options, but might be enough with others. It depends on your voice and how much you’ve had to drink. 

 

After the plan is set and everything is ready to go you have to make peace. Smile, make others laugh, make them feel happy your last day. Say your apologies, hug your friends,  _ smile _ you’ll be free in a few short hours. Tell your family that you love them and give your mom a kiss. She’s going to miss you. 

 

After that, you’re ready to go. Get your things together, tidy up your room, type out a goodnight text to your friends, and settle in for the night. Step five is the quickest of these steps.

  
Once the deed is done say hi to the reaper, don’t fear him, he’s just doing his job. 


	3. Division and Classification

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Big 3 Ways to Die 
> 
> These were the three ways I thought of how one could die and sorta explained them.

 

**Mind Body Society**

****  
  


What is death? How do you categorize death? Well, today, we’re going to describe the big three: societal, mental, and physical. 

Physical death is the most well known and easiest to understand; let us begin here. Physical death: when the body is no longer alive; the brain has stopped receiving oxygen; you’re capoot; you’re done; you’re any adult near Harry Potter; you’re dead. Physical death can come about in a multitude of ways: dying by space toilet landing on you; falling and cracking your skull open and no one finding you; being any protagonist’s parent; swinging a baseball bat so hard you rupture your bladder; molasses drowning; disease; falling down the chimney; being stupid; having the misfortune of being born into a world with millions of ways to kill you. Physical death is easy, it’s just dying and being gone. Physical death is easy because we understand it, we know that when someone is dead that they are gone and we will no longer see them. It’s different with the following ones. 

Societal death is not simply death: it’s a murder; a massacre; it’s a removal of every good thing a person has ever done in their life. Societal death is when you are ostracized, ridiculed, and shunned from society as a whole. It’s indicative of some wronging this person has done in the society, that they went against the code, against the way of life, that they have broken the status quo. Societal death is when you try to make a change but no one wants that change. Societal death is when you’ve done something so abnormal, so strange, that you can’t even be looked at as something to laugh at; you aren’t even something to be disgusted at. You’re made into nothing. Societal death has no funeral, it has no mourning, it simply has a disappearance of someone. When your death is through society, you no longer exist. 

Mentally dying is very different from the other two. When one is dead mentally they are still here. They aren’t shunned by society, simply shoved to the underbrush, covered over and told to be quiet.  They are unable to function properly, they can’t think clearly, everything is in a fog, and they’re struggling to live every day because they want is sleep. Sleep is a permanent want of the mentally dead and dying. It won’t matter if they sleep for fifteen hours or one, they’ll feel almost the same, the urge for sleep is desperate and hungered because the brain is dying their mental capacity is shortening to practically killing them. They can’t function anymore and they just want it to end but they can’t. Mentally dying is being tortured and abused by your own mind while others around you say that you are being lazy and overdramatic. Death by the mind is torture and endless until the society kills you or a falling toilet does.

They aren’t alone in that they are the only ones, these are just the largest stones in the skipping pond of ways to die. 

 


	4. Definition

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What is death?
> 
> This is death explained

**Death is Death**

Death is death. 

Death is something rushing towards you at all times. Death isn’t something to be afraid of, it’s something that is constantly happening all around you at all times. Death is just something that happens and really not a big deal. 

Death is when oxygen doesn’t reach the brain any longer. When you no longer have brain activity you’re dead. To define death is to define a thing that happens every day and that everyone has experienced. 

Death is sad, death is mean, death is long, painful and is excruciatingly rude to everyone involved. Death is death. It steals people away. It allows for quiet exits. It happens to the rich, to the poor, to the healthy, and to the sick. Death is unbiased. Death doesn’t care if you’re black, white, native, foreign, democratic, republican, an evil bigot, or a loving saint. Death literally gives zero shits about you. Because they are an emo skeleton on a horse. 

Death is death. 

We can’t control it. We can’t stop it. We can postpone it, avoid it, sneak around it for a ton of years, and try to not let it grip us, but it will. 

Death is forever, it is constant, it is inevitable. And we are so fucking terrified of it. 

They try to say that space is the final frontier, but truly that frontier shall be closed to one day. Death won’t. Death is a frontier forever eluding us, evading us, controlling us, and awaiting us. Death will always be waiting and will always be there for us to go to and for the living to never truly understand and to never fully see the end of. Death is forever, and because of that, we will forever have that frontier to go into. 

Death is death.

We have limitless options for reaching it, heck there’s a website describing how dumb people get themselves killed and how that’s great because it gets rid of people from the gene pool! We die in tons of stupid ways, we die in horribly tragic ways, we die in darkly hilarious ways, and we die in sad mournful ways. Some leave early before things start, some leave in the middle right when everything's getting good, some leave at the predawn ‘oh shit I just woke up with the worst hangover’ end, but we all leave. 

We leave because we have no choice. People leave, so we make up stories about where they went, we don’t know where they end up, but most of the time, we hope to see them again. We don’t know this frontier, we don’t understand it when it happens near us, but we rationalize it when we stand at a distance. We don’t know this frontier, we think of ourselves at the center of the most utter travesty when it affects us but can’t fully comprehend when we stand on the outskirts of the shit storm that is produced around death. 

Death is death and we can define it as simply the end of our understanding of our existence, scientifically, as a person with thoughts, feelings, and personality. Death is both all-consuming indescribable pain and incomprehensible suffering and as insignificant as crumbs in your bra after wearing a blouse.


	5. To Die or To Be Dead

What is the difference between to die and to be dead?

What is the difference between being stolen and being missing? 

Well, only the obvious. 

To die is to be stolen, you’re ripped from this world without a second thought as to what the consequences of your disappearance will have. Or, perhaps, only thoughts of the consequence. When you die you’ve been taken. You didn’t have any options and your family is mourning. It’s new and fresh. It’s an open wound dripping with sorrow and anger and hate. 

To be dead is to be gone gone. No one knows where you went, but they’ve decided that it’s normal for you not to be there. The consequences are done. The wound may have phantom pains every now and again, but it’s beyond scabbed, it’s healed and leaves no trace except in memory that it even occurred. 

To die is to be new and fresh and painful, to be dead is to be old and rotten and forgotten. 

But they are the same because at moments you are both. You have only just died, but people will act like you are long dead. Or they will act as if your corpse still sits warm in their arms when you’ve been nothing but bones for years. 

To die is also to be commemorated, you’re remembered and you won’t leave the frontal conscious for many a day. For even though your body, mind, and soul are gone from this plane, your memory is not.

To be dead, is to be history. You’re forgotten and unimportant. You’re Great Uncle Phil, who never had kids or a wife. You’re Great Grandma Sally, who never sent a Christmas card. Or you’re the guy who invented cardboard; everyone enjoys your invention, but you are unimportant. You weren’t important and so you’ve left the front of their thoughts, so not only is your mind and soul and body gone, but also your memory.

To be dead, and to die are the same. You’re gone. You are gone. Your soul is gone. You’ll never have another thought. YOU are dead. YOU died. It doesn’t matter that it’s fresh or that it’s old, people will never speak to, hear from, or see you again. 

So even if you’re still in memory on Earth, you aren’t. I’m sorry to say, that you’ll need to move on and get used to that fact for there is no way around it. It’s a fact of life and truly to die or to be dead it’s all the same, for you’ve slipped away in the night and gone to the worm buffet. Welcome, they’re very happy to see you, even if you’re a little salty from the tears.   
The true similarity is that even though you’ve died, you’ll try to act like you still have control, through wills and promises you expect to be carried out. That you won’t be there doesn’t matter to you. That these things are being done for your family doesn’t matter, because this is about you. The food for worms being frozen and stuffed currently. You act as if you still control things even from that overly expensive box you’re laying in; but you don’t. You aren’t here, you have no control, and you won’t ever again.


	6. Cause of Death

You were born. 

It wasn’t your fault.

Your parents had a laundry list of expectations that they hid under the lie of “oh we don't care as long as they’re healthy”. They do care, and they'll make sure you care too. 

If you are a boy, you will enjoy trucks, video games and violence. You are not allowed to cry, we don't care how you feel.

If you are a girl, you will like flowers, dresses, princesses and motherhood. You are not allowed to be angry, we don't care if it's justified. 

You are now in school. You must be the smartest. If you don't understand something, figure it out. You aren't allowed to be normal; that's not good enough. 

You're not the smartest anymore. All your parents talk about are your grades; about how you aren't trying. They say “If you just pushed yourself you wouldn't be so far behind your classmates”.   
It doesn't matter that you're trying, trying isn't good enough. Results are all that matter. 

You cheat. No one catches you. For a while, you can breathe a little because nobody is yelling at you due to inadequate grades. However, you feel as if you're nothing. You can't even make the marks you need by yourself, how pathetic. 

Finally, you’ve run out of shits to give, and you're numb. Thankfully, everything is suddenly unimportant.

Who cares about grades? They're pointless, they're annoying, and what will they do for you in the long run? Nothing. 

Who cares what you're parents think? All they care about is your grades, not you, so who cares what they think?

You're friends are leaving you. They say “you're not okay...”, that “...you need help”, but you don't care. 

Everything is numb, you would like to feel, but every time you do you find easier ways to be numb again. 

Dusk, and your words are slurred and stumbling from your tongue; just like your feet stumble down the park bridge. You're trying to remember why you're here, where you had been, but you can't. All the world is blurred in your mind and nothing seems to matter. Still, it all seems so immense and too much for you to handle. It's dark tonight, you're trying to walk home, but it's just, so dark, and you’re just, so tired. The world is spinning. The road is jumping, you lean on the rail to rest, just for a second. But why is the water so close?

When the paper prints your ‘tragic’ death, they say it's the fault of youth. 

When the police find your body, they sigh and call your parents. 

When your parents find out, they don't understand. They thought you were fine. 

When the school finds out, the rumors run rampant. 

When your friends find out, they shake their heads. One says they knew it would end like this. 

When your parents find the notebook they cry. They didn't understand. 

When your siblings find it by accident they scream at your grave for being selfish. They tell your friends who shake their heads and say, I know. 

Cause of death is declared to be drowning and over quickly.

In reality, cause of death was quite slow and years in the making.


	7. Who is Death?

Who is death?

Many argue over this exact topic, of who this mysterious entity in the world’s cycle is, and why, pray tell, they are such a big jackass?

Some explain that, logically, death is simply a fact of life, that in the end it all ends, not a person at all. However, in this essay, I will explain how in fact they are a person.

Death is not a man riding a pale horse. That statement is based on unfounded and undocumented second hand eyewitness accounts; therefore making them inadmissible in one’s argument. The pale horse is linked back to Biblical texts claiming that he is, in fact, part of the four horsemen of the apocalypse. However, during the 2012 end of the world, that all people remember and we all must never forget the fallen heroes from those horrible days, happened there was not a single documented image of a man in a cloak riding around on a pale horse.

The demons and fire were well documented and we have actual evidence of when the large hole, that holds our new Lord, opened up where New York once laid. We know of these things, we can go and see these things, or remember these things; this is not the case for the pasty horse ridden by a skeletal man.

Others shall claim this mysterious person to be Thanatos, the god of death, from the Greeks. They'll claim he is a man of darkness who wears a golden toga with wings of ash claiming the dead and dragging them back into the darkness of Hades. However, though a person such as this is seen periodically, his name is Phil and he's just a Chicago frat boy history major. Don't worry, he can't actually fly.

Some may state that, no, it is neither biblical or Grecian mythology that got it right but the Vikings! This is due to the their perception of many deaths coming and claiming their group, such as Loki's daughter, half skeleton half girl, who claims the souls of young children and walks them to the afterlife. Or the multitude of other deities of death that spawned from the Vikings horned heads, so they claim, come and take their people back to Valhalla.

However, any skeleton girls you've seen mucking about in the obekenobie swamp and in salt lake are simply the ones from either ocean rising back from the depths from which they were thrown. Do Not fear them, they're just looking for gold.

So, the question is left, who is death? Well, simply put, death is a skeletal man, a little girl, and an angel of death. They are whomever whisks you away in the night, or day, or evening, or morn', to Valhalla, hell, heaven, purgatory, the endless void, or a pile of kittens. Death is whoever carries you away from your own personal hell, or rips you away from your heaven.

This, however, doesn't matter, because we must all bow to the one and true God, Bob or Nosferatu.


End file.
